


The Cradle of the Storm

by mysticmjolnir (empressmaude)



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-29
Updated: 2014-03-29
Packaged: 2018-01-17 09:34:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1382581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/empressmaude/pseuds/mysticmjolnir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You fool, you didn't listen,” says Thor urgently, sliding his arm under his brother's back and lifting him as gently as he can.</p><p>Also Titled: Not a Death Scene</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on tumblr as Not a Death Scene. I was holding out posting this to a03 in the hopes of having a third part ready. It's partly written, but I want to completely rewrite it, so I'll post the first two parts anyway.

“You fool, you didn't listen,” says Thor urgently, sliding his arm under his brother's back and lifting him as gently as he can. There is an ugly wound in Loki's side, seeping dark blood over the pair of them, opened by the blade of a recently deceased Dark Elf. Her involvement in this event directly precipitated her death by lightning strike – the instant Thor saw his brother fall, he had raised Mjolnir to the sky and brought down enough of the storm to slaughter what remained of the enemy's forces, centred around the elf standing over Loki's body. It had knocked the rest of his comrades off their feet, but Thor had paid no heed at all to any but his brother. Even his hammer has been abandoned for the moment, and lies amid a sea of scattered and smoking corpses.

Loki seems dazed, his eyes unfocused and blinking slowly, and Thor fears his attack has damaged Loki further - that his instinct to obliterate any who dared to wound his brother has led him to blindly do the same – but Loki's eyes sharpen, and he reaches up to touch Thor's cheek with icy fingers. “What should I have listened to, brother?” he asks, in what is undoubtedly meant to be a biting tone, but comes out as an alarming weak rasp. “'twas you who said this would be a fine adventure – and now I have my first battle scars.”  
Thor chokes back a sob as Loki winds his arms around Thor's neck, silently cursing. “I told you to stay by me,” he murmurs. This is the first time Loki has been felled in battle. For years he has declined, some with grace and others with vemon, Thor's many invitations for him to come questing with his friends. For a time, Thor ceased to even try and coax him out of Asgard, resigned to the miserable chasm between them, but a recent and enlightening reconciliation between them means that he finally managed to persuade Loki to come out on an adventure. And now Loki is bleeding in his arms, and he almost wishes they were barely speaking still. Perhaps Loki is safer in the shadows, safer where his tricks and spells serve him better than on a battlefield, safer far from Thor's side-

“I am not dying,” Loki points out, his voice a little stronger. He winces and twists his fingers in the air then slides them into the ruined part of his surcoat. A faint green light glows from his wound for a moment, before Loki gives a quiet groan and slumps further against Thor, looking even paler.

“Loki?” Thor asks, reaching for Loki's hand and gripping it tightly. His panic lessens when Loki's fingers squeeze his weakly in return.

“A little seidr to stick the wound,” sighs Loki, sounding awfully faint again. “It is no healing spell, but it'll keep until we get back to Asgard.” He closes his eyes and turns his face against Thor. By now he is halfway into Thor's lap, and his forehead brushes Thor's chin. Thor presses a kiss on his brother's face and pulls Loki closer. He should be gathering Loki into his arms and calling for Heimdall to bring them home so Loki can be healed instantly. But he trusts his brother's judgement of his own magic, and if Loki does not feel a need to hurry then he will take a few moments to hold Loki, to reassure himself that Loki is alive and will soon be well again. The sight of the Dark Elf's blade slicing through Loki's side is one that will haunt him for centuries at least, and he needs to hear his brother's heartbeat and breathing for a short while.

It is no more than a minute until Loki begins to squirm, and slides his arms around Thor's neck again. He says nothing, but Thor realises quickly enough what he wants, and very carefully gathers Loki closer and stands up with his brother cradled against his chest. They are of a height, but Thor can carry his brother around as easily as he does Mjolnir, a fact that seems to vex and delight Loki by turns. 

The Warriors Three are all standing now, looking around at the carnage with bemused expressions. “I have not seen anything like this since Nornheim,” Fandral says, sounding awed. “You could have given us a little warning, Thor.”

Loki makes a quiet noise, and Thor looks at him, worried that moving him has reopened the wound. “Brother?” Loki simply smiles wanly and closes his eyes. At the back of Thor's neck, cold fingers wind around strands of his hair, tugging lightly. Thor cannot help feeling as if he is part of some trick Loki is playing, but he does not care overmuch. Loki's relationship with Thor's friends is strained at the best of times, and he is sure that normally Loki would rather bleed to death than let the Warriors see him so weakened in Thor's arms. 

“We should return to Asgard,” says Sif, making her way over the piles of bodies to them. “Is Loki injured?”

“Aye, when he fell Thor blasted us all off our feet as well,” replies Volstagg cheerfully. “Most inconsiderate, my prince, but I suppose it got the job done.”  
“I am sorry for knocking you down, my friends,” Thor says, ignoring Loki's strange sigh. He isn't sorry at all for summoning the storm, but he does regret that he could not warn his friends to get to a safe distance; to do so would have wasted precious seconds and perhaps have cost Loki's life. Besides, in the heat of the moment he had barely thought at all. “Sif is right, we must go home and get Loki to the healing rooms.”

As the others gather their weapons and ready to depart, Thor carefully balances Loki in one arm so he can call Mjolnir to his hand. Loki is silent and docile, alarming content to be cradled for so long and jostled around as Thor hooks his hammer back onto his belt. Thor worries for his brother's wound, but Loki does not look worsened at all – rather, there is a shadow of a smirk on his lips and his eyes look tired but almost smug.

Thor admits now a flicker of interest at his brother's strange mood, but questioning him will have to wait until they are home and Loki is healed and whole once more. He calls to Heimdall once they are all ready and the Bifrost sucks them into the sky, Loki tucked safely into his arms. The guilt of failing to protect his brother weighs on him, but he will use it to better himself, to become stronger so next time he and Loki stand together in battle neither of them will fall.


	2. Chapter 2

Thor carries his brother directly to the healing rooms, and then refuses to leave until Eir threatens to summon the Queen. Loki watches with amusement as Thor huffs and finally leaves after extracting a reluctant and entirely unnecessary oath from the goddess of healing to use all her powers to bring his brother back to full health. She promises only keep him blocking the doorway any longer, and then glares at Loki while she sets to work, as if it is his fault Thor is such a stubborn brute. 

It takes less than an hour to mend his wound – Loki could have used his own feet to travel home Thor hadn't been so quick to cradle him up like a child. Eir looks even more annoyed that his injury was so little worth her time, and curtly shows him the door when she is done, with a snappish order to not let himself be seen in her chambers again unless he has actually lost one or more of his limbs.

Loki pays her little heed and returns to his own rooms, still reliving the moments after his fall. The spear had struck him worse than he intended, but he had been ready to strike the elf from behind with a clone a second later. To his surprise, however, Thor had been faster.

Lying on his back while lightning struck the ground around him and thunder shook the earth had been a...unique experience. At first, Loki had not realised what was happening, until Thor was kneeling by his side, tender and concerned and stinking of ozone. The storm had been for him, all of it – at the first hint of Loki not coming out of battle unscathed, Thor had dragged down the skies and massacred the entire troop of Dark Elves they'd been fighting before rushing to his brother's side and fussing over him, not even checking to see if his friends had survived his own destructive strike.

It would take tremendous effort to doubt Thor's affection after that display, and Loki has neither the will nor the desire. He will have to think of some particularly profound trick to play on the idiots three later, after letting them see him so apparently fragile, and something to wipe the smirk off Sif's face, but that is a minuscule price to pay for such a dramatic demonstration of Thor's love. 

He walks into his chambers and finds Thor pacing restlessly. “Brother!” cries Thor, his hair caked with blood and still dressed in his armour, and crosses the room to pull Loki into an embrace. “Brother, I feared-”

“I know what you feared,” replies Loki, closing his eyes and letting himself lean close. There is a strange energy humming through him, latent since the moment he'd realised what utter devastation Thor had wrecked on his behalf. He tingles from his lips to his groin, and it only increases as he draws nearer to his brother. “But I am fine now, Thor.”

Thor's fingers reach for the ruined edges of Loki's surcoat, sliding to caress the fresh and undamaged skin beneath the cracked leather. The intimacy of the gesture makes Loki shiver – this connection between them is very, very new, this admission and embrace of what Loki had long thought a hopeless, personal perversion. It has been only a handful of months since they fell into Thor's bed after an argument instead of storming off to opposite ends of the palace, and sometimes Loki wonders if he is having an oddly sustained and exquisite dream. He can feel Thor's hand trembling, and relishes the thought that Thor is undoubtedly even more nervous than he is.

“You called the storm for me,” he says softly, opening his eyes and gazing at his brother, hungry for what he knows he will see there. Thor is looking at him as if nothing else exists but Loki, eyes bluer and more open than the skies above. His brother is the greatest warrior of Asgard, the golden prince of the Realm Eternal, the best beloved god of all the nine realms, and he is all Loki's. Whatever has been building within Loki breaks suddenly at the thought, and he kisses Thor savagely, sliding his hands into Thor's tangled hair and holding him tightly.

Thor replies with equal passion, and casually rips away a large piece of Loki's coat before tightening his hands on Loki's hips. He growls Loki's name, and Loki shoves him away far enough to start tearing off his armour. They tussle uselessly for a moment before Thor starts to help instead of hinder, and begin stumbling their way towards the bed, dropping clothes and armour as they go. 

Thor manages to throw Loki down onto the covers first, then strips off his leggings while Loki watches hotly, stroking his fingers down his side. When Thor joins him, Loki ducks away at the last minute, forcing his brother to follow him to the head of the bed where he rests against the pillows. He gets another growl in response and grins widely as Thor drags him back by his ankle to lie flat and moves over Loki to pin him down.

He cannot help but draw a comparison with lying beneath the storm earlier – Thor's power is all around him once again, this time close enough to touch, this time entirely focused on him. Thor is a storm within himself, he crackles with energy and electricity running just under the skin, and Loki can feel it where Thor's fingers press against him, where his mouth sucks a bruise into the base of Loki's neck. He hooks a leg around the back of Thor's thighs to draw his brother in closer, arching up and gasping, partly to entice and partly from pure and honest pleasure. 

Thor kisses down Loki's chest, nuzzling with particular interest at his side. The feel of prickly stubble against such freshly-healed flesh is intense, and Loki scowls as Thor slows down, taking more time to satisfy himself the wound is fully gone than Loki cares to give him. He digs his heel into Thor's back irritably until Thor moves on, then moans loudly when Thor's mouth finds his cock. Wet heat engulfs him, driving coherent thought briefly out of his mind completely, until Thor pulls off and begins pressing suckling kisses downward to his balls and up again. 

“Brother,” he sighs, rocking his hips up and spreading his legs, allowing Thor's questing fingers to slip underneath him and tease between his buttocks. Having Thor worship his cock so eagerly is delightful, but the thought of Thor inside him has Loki reaching blinding for the oil he now keeps beside his bed and tossing it down to his brother, narrowly missing his head. Thor takes the hint and slicks his fingers before pushing two in, making Loki whimper with need.

Neither of them are terribly patient, and soon Thor is looming over him once again, cock breaching him and sliding into him in one delicious easy movement. Loki sighs and wraps his legs around Thor's waist, fisting one hand into Thor's hair to pull him down for a kiss. 

As Thor begins to move with pleasing vigour, he bites a path down Loki's jaw to his ear and murmurs words that make Loki shudder with joy; words of love and sweetness mixed with possessive promises and oaths of vengeance against any who would dare to harm him. Loki doesn't even try to respond in kind, just rolls his hips up against Thor and claws encouragement into his brother's broad back. The storm is his, Thor is his, and the delight of being a cherished lover is entwined with heady knowledge of his new power. He comes without even needing to touch himself, screaming with pleasure.

Thor shoves Loki's slackened legs up higher and starts to pound into Loki even harder than before, using his brother so roughly there will be bruises across Loki's body come the morning. The thought makes Loki moan again softly, and he pushes his hands into Thor's hair with a sly grin. “I am yours and you are mine, brother,” he whispers fiercely, squeezing deliberately around Thor's cock, arching up against him. A few more thrusts and Thor is climaxing inside him, shouting his own release like a thunderclap.   
Loki smiles and reaches up to kiss Thor softly, utterly indifferent to the mess of sweat and seed mixed with hours-old blood on their bodies. Soon they will rise and go to their private bathhouse to wash away the last of the battle and no doubt fuck again, but for the moment, Loki keeps his brother close, wanting to indulge his own affections and be adored in turn.

“Beloved,” sighs Thor, rolling to the side and dragging Loki with him, pulling Loki fully on top of his chest and stroking a hand gently down his spine. Loki occupies himself with pressing small kisses along Thor's shoulders and nuzzling lovingly at his neck. Since he was old enough to realise the differences between them, he had felt envy and desire aplenty for Thor's strength and beauty. For years he tried to strangle his own admiration of his brother out of spite, but now, now that he knows there is a sanctuary and a home just for him in Thor's arms, his heart feels aglow with love and he can hardly remember wanting to see Thor humbled and broken at his feet. It could not possibly be better than what he has now. 

“Beloved,” Loki mumbles into the hollow of Thor's jaw before moving to nestle against his brother's side and rest his head on Thor's shoulder. He curls an arm up and runs a fingertip in idle patterns over Thor's chest, occasionally scoring the skin lightly with his nail. Thor seems ready to fall into a doze with his brother clasped to his side, and Loki shuts his eyes, happy to do the same. Later they will bathe, and fuck, and then Loki will find a way to suitably humiliate Thor's friends and remind them he is a trickster, not a hapless invalid, and then he will seduce Thor into forgiving him for that, and after that, who knows? Thor belongs to him now, and the world is packed with tantalising new possibilities. 

Loki sighs happily and throws his leg over Thor's, tucking his foot between his brother's knees. The princes of Asgard stand together as never before, and Loki will see the nine realms tremble in recognition of it before he is through.


End file.
